After-Party

September 15, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Allegory, Assembly, control, Current affairs, Flash Fiction, Freedom, Government, Micro-fiction, Sculpture, SPF, Sunday Photo Fiction, Tyranny 14 Comments

Prompt photo: Pixabay

They were going to put them there to remember, they said. To frame the recollections of the community, so none of what had happened be forgotten. That’s what they said.

It was meant as a memorial of sort, they said. A referendum of the eye. Intended to draw the faces upwards and lend a sense of a somber chaos, carefully controlled.

Perhaps it was all that. Yet it was so much more.

For the installation was also meant to keep the chairs out of reach. To take away the possibility of seating. To have people stand and look and move on, rather than linger or make themselves oh-too-comfortable. Again.

Because it was the idleness – those in power believed but did not say – that had led to the gatherings and speeches and protests and that weekend party-turned-riot. People got too comfortable in using public spaces as if those were a right rather than a privilege. They sat. They lingered. They huddled together and began to think they should have the power to decide how they passed their spare time, where and who with they sat. Mutiny, it was.

The police were sent to squash it.

And put all the chairs up.

For Donna’s Sunday Photo Fiction prompt

Delicately

September 14, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Delicate, healing, hope, Patience, Poetry, Relationships, Sensitivity, tenderness, Weekend Writing Prompt, Writing Challenge 12 Comments

Photo: Amitai Asif

She flitted gently by his head.

The slight bow noted, the sorrow that was there

But perhaps not heard.

She knew he had to hold himself up

All this time

That it was the only way

He’d learned.

And yet she could discern the hidden

Effort that it took

To rise against the gravity,

In times where drought of hope

Returned

Again and again and again.

She understood the energy required for

Making the Herculean appear effortless,

To constantly correct

The wobble under

Winds and strain.

She hovered for a moment

Letting a space of permission

Manifest

Before she landed, feather-weighted and,

Delicate

On his chest.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Delicate in 106 words

Blue Belle

September 13, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Writing Tags: Be there, Blue, Creative writing, Flower, listening, Small Things, SoCS, speech therapy, speech-language-pathology, Therapy, Witness, Writing prompt 20 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

She hangs out next to the couch, wrapped around the floor lamp like a hand in a hand. She’s been there a long time. She lived on other floor lamps before this one, till their time had come and she welcomed a new one. She makes friends with them all, says goodbye to those who lost their spark. Perhaps she thinks of them, sometimes.

She hangs out next to the couch, wrapped around the floor lamp like a protective palm over a young hand. She watches little fingers wrestling beads onto threads, listens as small mouths make words out of thoughts, witnesses big hearts in tiny chests writing grand ideas into evolving minds – theirs and mine.

She hangs out next to the blue couch. She hears the unasked questions that stay behind worried parents’ lips. The questions children ask, sometimes for the first time. She understands. She does not prod. She just knows. They look for her, especially after a long break, reassured to find her there, still wrapped around the floor lamp like a comfy hug.

She’s been there long enough to find the right time to catch their eye.

With a quiet smile.

Blue Belle on her perch by the couch. Patience in her heart, twinkle in her eye.

For Linda Hill’s SoCS prompt: Blue (first blue object you see)

Light Ahead

September 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Depression, Flash Fiction, hardship, hope, Life Lessons, light, Metaphor, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Tenacity, WritePhoto 24 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

After weeks of gray and thistles and ceaseless wind that scraped her raw, there was light.

She could scarcely believe it at first.

The cloud cover had been so complete for so long that she’d began wondering if there was even a real sun still behind it. The revolutions of soupy daylight and inky nights felt equally murky as every step became oppressive. She had waking dreams of being lost inside a massive warehouse, a mouse in a maze, endlessly seeking an exit yet seeing none.

She wondered whether there was still use in trying. She was oh so tired.

Now there was a break. The sky spawned a cavity and the leaden heavens began to dissipate. She could discern a layer of ease in the distance.

And light, streaming like caressing fingers ahead. Showing the way home.

Note: Dedicated to the all-too-many who are staggering through their personal wilderness, caught in the molasses of gloom, and thinking of giving up — keep on, hold on. There’s light ahead, and we’re leaving it on for you.

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto challenge

Read To Remember

September 11, 2019September 11, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Meditations, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Current affairs, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, kindness, Memoriam, No More Hate, Reading, Remembrance, September 11, Terrorism, Trauma 50 Comments

Photo prompt © CEAyr

“I read to remember,” she said, her voice steel and quiver. “I read because he no longer can and because I know he was, most very likely, reading at the very moment his life stopped, evaporated, in mid-word. I read because mine almost stopped in the loss of him and in the enormity of the awfulness that took him and so many.

“I read to not forget. Because there is a bigger spark in life than in sorrow, and because he never would have left us, and certainly not this way. If it weren’t for the planes.

That September day.”

Note: Dedicated to all the lost, and to all those who lost so much, and to all that has been changed — insidiously and indelibly for so many — on September 11, 2001. I was here. I remember and I understand why we remember and what we must remember about ourselves and about who we can be. May we hold truth. May we be the better, kinder, more humane version of ourselves.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Feasible Focus

September 10, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: attention, Be yourself, Extroverts, Focus, fpj-photo-challenge, Introverts, Life paths, Observations, Photo Challenge, Photography, Poetry 25 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

Some jump out,

Intent on being

Captured

By the lens,

The center

Of focused

Attention,

While others

Fade delicately

Into the blurry

Background

To observe,

Potentially

Just as content.

For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Focus

Summer Layers

September 8, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Beautiful, Central Park, Haiku, Layers, Micro Poetry, Nature, New York City, Photo Challenge, Photography, Poetry, Summer, Sunday Stills 12 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

Life is stacked like so

Many layers of summer

In the Central Park.

(Note: While I do resent the growing need to face reality of summer heading to an end, I accept the challenge for increased layer-awareness … 😉 ).

For the Sunday Stills challenge: Seasonal Layers

Pharaohsaurus

September 7, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: Dinosaurs, Flash Fiction, Fossils, History, Micro-fiction, Museum, Patience, Pharaohs, Siblings, Weekend Writing Prompt, Writing Challenge 23 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

“It looks like a pharaoh,” the boy commented.

“Hmm …” the girl leaned her elbows on the display case to take a photo. Dinosaurs weren’t Pharaohs, but her little brother was obsessed with anything Egyptian, so it was easier to agree. Took long enough to drag him out of that wing of the museum and into what she really wanted to see.

“Do you think the pharaohs saw one of these and it gave them the idea?”

She sighed. “There were no dinosaurs left at the time of pharaohs.”

“It’s not what I meant!” His nudge made her take a photo of a piece of plaster instead of the fossil bones. “Maybe they found something like this one.”

“Stop it!” She hissed. They’d be told to leave if they fought.

“Sorry.” He was, only sort of. “Is it called a ‘pharaohsaurus’?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Well, it should!”

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Museum in 147 words

The Whey Weigher’s Way

September 6, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing, Yummy Tags: Cheese making, Dairy, health, History, Just for fun, Nutrition, Rhyme, SoCS, Way, Weigh, Whey, Writing prompt 28 Comments

A girl churning butter, three-quarter length, facing front, looking away to left, wearing a low-necked dress, apron, and small frilled cap over short curls; after Mercier. Mezzotint

Photo: The British Museum #2010,7081.1712

Tis the Whey Weigher’s way

To weigh

The whey

As she goes

About her day

Sifting curds

Through woven trays.

You can stay

If you may

To watch the way

She weighs her whey

In pots and jugs

Of rounded

Clay.

And though so many

Will downplay

The lowly whey

As throw away,

She knows it is

Quite fair to say

That whey is worthy

Of more sway

And should more than

Earn it’s pay.

(I had WAY too much fun with this today! 🙂 )

For the SoCS writing prompt: way/weigh/whey

Forget The ABC

September 5, 2019September 5, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: ABC, Adventure, Curiosity, Discovery, Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, Mystery, Photo prompt, Taking risks, WritePhoto 20 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

“If you knew where it goes, would you follow?”

Efran peeked down the leaf-strewn stone shaft and rough steps. “I can see where it goes,” he pointed. “There.”

Jerow shook his head. It could be difficult to know with Efran, whose disposition tended to be ebullient to the point of daft, whether the lad was deliberately vexing or totally clueless. “Yes, you see what looks like the bottom of the stairs, but what’s behind it? Where does it go?”

Efran took anther step and leaned closer to the crack between the stones, absentmindedly pushing back the locks of hair that forever escaped out of his braid. “Well, only one way to know.”

“Wait,” Jerow reached for Efran’s arm. He glanced behind him toward the encampment they’d wandered away from. The trees obscured it. Unless others were stretching restless legs while the elders deliberated the day’s route over morning tea, no one would know where they are. “Shouldn’t we tell someones?”

“Why? So they open a whole new round of discussions about who should be allowed to go down there first and at what auspicious hour?”

Jerow had to admit Efran had a point. If the elders knew about this, they’d probably find reason to forbid it, and if they didn’t know about this, they’d forbid it all the more. Probably claim ABC and CBC.

“Advice Before Carelessness” and “Caution Before Curiosity” were endlessly drilled and just as often resented. How was anyone to learn anything new or do anything exciting if inevitable delays always took precedent to investigation?

Still, he wondered if in this particular case there was merit to at least asking before launching oneself into a crack in the ground. They were, after all, in what everyone knew were haunted territories. He looked around again, almost hoping for someone to stop them.

“Forget the ABC!” Efran dropped his feet onto the steps and used his arms to brace against the narrow walls. “I want to see! Stick to your letters or come with me!”

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto